Images of world and the inscription of war, Harun Farocki, Germany, 1989, 75’ + The fall of a hero, Hasan Özgür Top, Turkey,15’

Images of world and the inscription of war,  Harun Farocki, Germany, 1989, 75’

Examines the rediscovery and analysis by two CIA employees, 33 years later, of the US Air Force aerial photographs taken over the Nazi death camps during World War II.

The fall of a hero, Hasan Özgür Top, Turkey, 2020,  15’

"Set in an interrogation room, THE FALL OF A HERO (2020) shows a suspect (played by the artist) describing to an off-camera voice the Islamic State’s recruitment materials and the way they construct a familiar postlapsarian account. A call to restore glory after a putative fall from grace is couched in the language of moral urgency: Make the caliphate great again! We learn that ISIS uses the Trajan font—popular among marketers of Hollywood films and video games like LORD OF THE RINGS and ASSASSIN’S CREED—in their propaganda materials. But the intersections with pop culture do not end here: others include homophobic homosociality; a view of history as an endless struggle against decadence; violence as apotropaic remedy; and heroic masculinity as the solution rather than toxic masculinity as the problem. (Ana Teixeira Pinto,12th Berlin Biennale catalogue, 2022)

Presentation and colloquium by Mikel Otxoteko.